Chapter 24 Everly
Everly
It was freezing, the kind of cold that even dragon fire couldn’t touch.
Snow stretched endlessly in every direction, wind whipping through the vast, empty space.
“Mana always demands a sacrifice.”
Nevara’s voice cut into the silence, crueler than I knew her to be.
The scene shifted, and suddenly she was there, pale braids streaked with obsidian, her starlit eyes open, staring at nothing.
Blood flowed from the tear in her abdomen and spread across the snow in a slow spiral until it twisted into the shape of a single rose, forged from scarlet ice.
The word sacrifice echoed again, louder this time, as dark silhouettes circled the edges of the field.
Their limbs moved too quickly, bent at unnatural angles, closing the distance with horrifying ease until all I knew was darkness…
darkness, and the bitter resignation that soaked into the very marrow of my bones, the soul-deep certainty that I had failed.
And everyone I loved would pay the price.
I woke with a sharp shiver, but the world hadn’t changed when I opened my eyes.
I was still shrouded in darkness, still paralyzed with cold.
Shadows writhed around the room, moving in frantic arcs that I couldn’t control.
It took me too many shaky breaths to understand what should have been obvious.
The nightmare was not mine.
Draven lay beside me in his massive bed, his body locked in place as if carved from winterstone.
The sheets beneath him glittered faintly with frost, spider-webbing all the way to my body.
Wind whipped wildly through the room, jagged shards of sleet melding with my shadows in a frigid maelstrom that sliced through the thin shift I wore.
Whisper-thin spires exploded from my body, and I shot across the bed just in time to avoid them piercing into my husband’s side.
Shards blasted forsaken every damned thing.
Not now. I could not lose control now.
I sank to my knees beside the bed, my wings and claws emerging with the effort of keeping my mana at bay.
One breath in, another out, but the next one caught in my throat. Another gale swept through the room, even icier than the last. A high-pitched keening sounded in tandem with the eerie, hollow wind.
The wolves. They were frantic just outside the door, but I couldn’t open it. I couldn’t move at all, for fear of losing the fragile thread of control I had managed.
Draven’s mana slammed into me, throwing me off-kilter as an even higher, shriller sound melded with the rest.
Batty. And what was either a cry of alarm or another ill-advised attempt at song.
Her shrieks seemed to echo into eternity, her tiny white body impossible to spot in the veritable blizzard around me. The spires twisted further, shadows wrapping around them until both seemed to burrow underneath my skin.
All the while, the storm raged, and the wolves howled, and Batty cried out in what I could only hope was not pain. Surely she wasn’t hurt.
I carved my talons into my palm, willing myself to move… to do something. My legs trembled, and my teeth chattered, but I pushed to my feet just in time for something warm to smack against my cheek.
My skathryn was also trembling, though likely more from the effort of flying through the swirling winds with her adolescent wings than from the cold she was so accustomed to. She wove clumsily between the shadow-ice spires around me, scooting down until she was nestled against my neck.
I assumed she was trying to comfort one, or both, of us… until she flapped her wings against my skin. Hard.
A jolt went through me, one that might have been painful if the war raging within hadn’t already brought me to the edge of agony. My mana cut off abruptly, just for a second, just long enough for me to wrestle it back into submission.
“Did you do that?” My words were a whisper in the increasingly loud storm around us, but Batty squeaked what I assumed was an affirmation all the same.
Putting aside the issue of how the skathryn could do whatever the hells she had done, I focused on getting to Draven, one shivering step at a time.
Crawling across the bed, I gently set Batty on my pillow before I climbed on top of Draven, pressing myself fully against him. He was freezing, his skin burning like solid ice against mine.
“Draven.” I ran my hands along his chest, his shoulders, trying to infuse him with whatever warmth I could while I repeated his name.
His mana lashed out around the room, skirting around me like even in his sleep, it was his instinct to keep me safe. Once again, I cursed the fact that I still couldn’t use my mana to protect him in kind, couldn’t use it at all.
“Draven, don’t make me run off and do something stupid to keep you safe,” I muttered, trying to threaten him into waking up. “Here I go, putting myself in danger…”
Somewhere, my words must have pierced through whatever spell he was under. With a ragged breath, he finally jolted awake, his mana coming to an abrupt halt.
I gently moved to where I was pressed against his side, rather than full-on lying on top of him, tilting my head so I could see him. The aurora lights danced across his flawless skin, reflecting in the gaze he kept fixed firmly on the ceiling.
A faint sheen of sweat covered his brow, in spite of the cold, and his broad chest rose and fell in disjointed pants.
Still, the room was oppressively silent in the wake of his storm, but no more peaceful for its absence. Tension thrummed between us, the air weighted down with all the things we couldn’t bring ourselves to speak into the world.
To hells with that.
“I’ve seen that rose before.” My voice was too abrupt, too loud in the hush, but I didn’t regret speaking.
Whatever else we were to each other right now, whatever other issues we were grappling with, I knew all too well how short our time was together and I was so tired of spending it in silence.
He had tried, when he told me the story about Nevara. I might never accept the brutality with which he ruled his court, but I could try to understand him better.
So I let the sentence dangle in the air, seeing if he would respond to it.
Several seconds passed while I rethought my stance on whether I regretted speaking. Batty let out a light chirp that was decidedly awkward in nature, and I reached up to stroke her head like I didn’t notice that.
But Draven still didn’t speak.
I let out a breath, defeat curling low in my gut. Just as I was going to shut my eyes and pretend to fall back asleep, a vision entered my mind. The same rose, artfully crafted from crimson ice, set into an intricately carved tomb.
“They were her favorite flower,” he explained.
His mother’s, he meant. I had pieced together from his memories that he had seen her die at the Frostgrave Battle, but it had never occurred to me to ask what happened to her body afterward.
“It’s beautiful,” I told him honestly.
He took a sharp breath in. “Maybe, but that wasn’t why she loved them. She said they were the only flowers that could protect themselves.”
“The way that she protected you,” I offered.
Draven blinked once, shifting imperceptibly. “When she could.”
I thought of the memories I had glimpsed at Nevara’s bedside, the male who had looked like Draven but for the cruelty that emanated from every core of his being. Draven was ruthless, but he wasn’t cruel, not like that.
I had assumed his mother’s kindness had kept him from becoming that way, but I was beginning to suspect it was more than that. Nevara was protective of him, too, in the way you aren’t with someone who has never needed to be kept safe.
Maybe Draven sensed my brain working overtime to put those things together because he let out a bitter huff of air.
“My father didn’t believe in things that were ornamental.” His voice was tinged with bitterness, the way it always was when he spoke of the late king. “He called her flowers useless, so she expanded the gardens a little more every year. A silent rebellion.”
I had wondered more than once why he bothered to maintain the single spot of life in his frozen tundra of a palace.
What had it taken to maintain a rebellion, even a small, silent one, against the king of all of Winter? I thought of my stubborn refusal to sleep in my bed when I first arrived, a faint smile coming to my lips at the idea that I had something in common with Draven’s mother.
Of course, the difference was that my husband was only ever a monster to the rest of the world. Never to me.
“She sounds like someone I would have liked,” I murmured quietly.
He took another sharp breath, and I wondered if I had gone too far, but then he nodded.
“She would have liked you, too.” The words were forced, but no less sincere for it.
I tilted my head. The ring didn’t vibrate, so I knew he was telling the truth, but it seemed unlikely, all things considered. Would she really have liked the Unseelie bride who had kept Winter on the brink of ruin?
“Even knowing… what I am?” I pressed, unable to help myself.
He nodded again, more thoughtfully this time. “She cared more about my happiness than… anything else, really.”
That, too, was tinged with something bittersweet.
“And are you? Happy?” The words came out smaller than I intended, and unlike before, I did immediately want to take them back. “Never mind. Don’t answer that. It was a stupid thing to ask.”
Mostly because I knew the answer. However he felt about me, he wasn’t going to be happy that he was stuck with someone whose very existence destabilized the kingdom he was trying to protect, who put themselves in danger at every turn.
On top of that, his best friend was on the verge of death, and monsters were ravaging his kingdom, and his wife’s own family was setting the stage for another war.
Draven turned his head to look at me. His hand came to rest on my cheek, his thumb tracing the lines of my cheekbones.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve remembered what happiness is, Morta Mea.”
I tried not to let his response pierce through the armor of my practicality. Hadn’t I just thought the same thing? It shouldn’t have hurt, not like it did.
“But,” he said, dragging his thumb along the line of my lips, “then the Shard Mother gave me you, and I finally remembered what it was to hope for something better. So yes, I’m as happy as I can be under the circumstances… because of you.”
He curled his free hand around mine, tracing my ring like he wanted to remind me that it wasn’t vibrating. He was telling the truth.
“And,” he went on, “I might even be able to stay that way if you could stop trying to get yourself killed for at least a few days.”
“I’m afraid that one day is the maximum amount of time I can commit to,” I murmured, mostly to avoid acknowledging the stabbing of tears at the backs of my eyes.
“I wish I could pretend you were joking,” he muttered, his breath warm against my lips.
I didn’t have a chance to respond before his mouth was on mine, which was just as well, since whatever I said would have likely been a lie anyway. He was right.
Neither of us would ever be happy while the other one was actively in danger, but this—the feeling of his body entwined with mine, every nerve on fire while our bond wrapped us both in unending warmth—it was worth every moment of chaos and pain that life wanted to throw at us.
It had to be.